CHARLES II.
1660-1685.
[Sidenote: =Character of Charles.=]
Charles Stuart, who now returned to fill the English throne, was a
young man of thirty. He had spent the last fourteen years of his life
in exile, the penniless guest of many unwilling hosts in Holland,
France, and Germany. Save eighteen uncomfortable months passed in the
camp of the Scottish Covenanters, none of the days of his manhood
had been spent on this side of the sea. He was continental in his
manners, thoughts, and life. He had picked up his personal morals at
the French court, and his political morals from the group of intriguing
exiles who had formed his wandering and impecunious court. He laughed
at purity in women and honesty in men. He was grossly selfish and
ungrateful. Knowing by long experience how bitter is the bread doled
out by the exile's host, "how steep to climb another's stair," he had
one fixed idea--"he would never," as he phrased it, "go on his travels
again." He had resolved to stay in England at all costs, to enjoy
the Promised Land, now, contrary to all expectation, fallen into his
hands. Accordingly, he wished to get as much out of his kingdom as was
compatible with the necessity of never offending the majority of the
nation. His personal leanings lay in the direction of absolute power
and Right Divine, but he was perfectly ready to sacrifice them to his
prudence. If he had any religious bias, it led him in the direction of
Romanism--a comfortable creed for kings--but he was quite prepared to
pose as a zealous Anglican, just as during his stay in Scotland he had
become a conforming Presbyterian.
Charles, though destitute of personal beauty--his features were thin
and harsh--had an affable address, a lively wit, and perfect manners.
Supple and suave, he could make himself agreeable among any company. He
had the careless good-humour that so often accompanies selfishness, and
his character was too light and easy to make him a good hater. He was
quite prepared to take to himself any allies who might appear, and to
sell himself to any bidder whose terms were high enough.
[Sidenote: =Charles and the Convention Parliament.=]
Charles appeared in England as the representative of legality and
constitutional rule, as the saviour of society who was to lay once
more the foundations of peace and order, after ten years of military
despotism. He was ready to accept just so much power as might be
offered him, with the full intention of ultimately gaining as much more
as he could safely assume. The "Convention Parliament," with which he
had at first to deal, was a cautious body, containing many elderly men,
who had fought against Charles I. and only accepted his son because
of the dismal experience of ten years of rule by military "saints."
The new king was therefore bound to be careful at first. Any unwise
movement of opposition might upset his still unsteady throne.
The Parliament, however, was prepared to deal very liberally with
Charles. They disbanded the old Cromwellian standing army. They
granted him an annual revenue of £1,200,000 for life, to be raised
from customs and excise. In return, the old vexatious feudal dues of
the crown from reliefs, wardships, alienations, etc., were abolished.
An amnesty was voted to all who had fought against the king in the
old wars, with the single exception of those who had sat in the "High
Court of Justice" of 1649, and been concerned in the execution of
Charles I. Eighty-seven persons, of whom twenty-four were dead, came
under this category. Of the survivors some score fled over-seas; the
remainder were tried before a court of High Commission. Thirteen were
executed,[43] twenty-five imprisoned for life, the rest punished
with less rigour; at the same time the Earl of Argyle, the chief of
the Scottish Covenanters, was executed at Edinburgh. The bodies of
Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were ordered to be disinterred and
gibbeted--an unworthy and uncomely act for which the spirit of the time
is no sufficient excuse.
An "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" was passed to cover acts of the
governments of the last twelve years. It stipulated that Crown and
Church lands which the Commonwealth had granted away should be restored
by their present holders, who were not, however, to suffer any other
penalty. Private lands were to be restored if they had been actually
confiscated by the government, but not if they had been sold by the
Cavalier owners under pressure of war or debt. Thus many who had served
Charles I. to the best of their ability got no compensation from his
son. Gratitude was not the new king's strong point.
[Sidenote: =The Church question.=]
There was a third problem on which the Convention Parliament found
the gravest difficulty in arriving at an agreement--the settlement of
the Church. The benefices of England were at the moment in the hands
of Presbyterian and Independent ministers of various shades of creed.
Many of them had replaced incumbents of the Church of England thrust
out by the Long Parliament. Others had succeeded in more peaceful wise.
On the other hand, the extruded clergy of the old Church were claiming
restoration to the cures from which they had been so ruthlessly
ejected. What was to be done between the old holders and the new? Was
the Church of England to be restored in all its ancient organization,
and to become Anglican and Episcopal once more, or was it to be a lax
organization including all manner of beliefs within its fold? The
Parliament included many who were for "comprehension," and many who
were pledged to a rigid restoration of the old order. It had been
unable to come to any conclusion when it was dissolved in December,
1660. The king, however, had issued a declaration that a conference
should be held between an equal number of Presbyterian and Episcopal
divines, with the object of arriving at a compromise.
[Sidenote: =The Cavalier Parliament.=]
The new House of Commons which met in the spring of 1661 was a very
different body from the "Convention." Elected in the full flush of
Royalist enthusiasm at the restoration of law and order, it contained
a very small proportion of the old Roundhead party. Its members, young
and old, were for the most part such zealous adorers of Church and
King, that they received the name of the "Cavalier Parliament." Charles
was ready to take all they cared to give him, while his prime minister
Clarendon was a High Churchman, and an advocate of hereditary divine
right; but even they found it necessary to restrain from time to time
the exuberant loyalty of the Commons.
The "Cavalier Parliament" showed the blindest confidence in the king,
whose real character his subjects had not yet discovered. They passed
bills asserting the incompetency of the two Houses to legislate without
the sovereign's consent, declaring that under no circumstances was
it lawful to levy war against the king, and placing all the military
and naval forces of the realm in his hands. The "Solemn League and
Covenant," which had been the shibboleth of the old Roundheads, they
ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.
[Sidenote: =The Act of Uniformity.=]
These comparatively harmless beginnings were followed by a series
of bills prompted by a spirit of unwise rancour against the men who
had ruled England from 1648 to 1660. The Cavaliers had twelve years
of spiritual and temporal oppression to revenge, and were determined
to do as they had been done by. The Church settlement, which had
been left pending by the Convention, they carried out in the most
summary way. The king had promised that a meeting between divines of
the old Church and Presbyterian ministers should be held, in order
to endeavour to bring about a union. But the scheme came to nothing;
at the "Savoy Conference" of 1661, each side refused to move an inch
from its position. The Parliament then proceeded to pass the "Act
of Uniformity," to force the Puritans either to conform or to leave
the Church. The Book of Common Prayer, slightly revised, and the
Thirty-nine Articles were to be the rule of faith, and every minister
was ordered to use and abide by them. Every incumbent was to declare
his assent to them by August 24, 1662, or to vacate his benefice;
such was also to be the fate of all who refused to accept Episcopal
ordination. This left the Puritan ministers three months to choose
between conformity and expulsion--a longer shrift than they had allowed
the Anglican clergy in the days of the triumph of Presbyterianism.
The large majority of them conformed, and accepted Episcopacy and
the Book of Common Prayer; these men became the parents of the "Low
Church" party of the succeeding age. The more stubborn souls refused
obedience; about 2000 of them were expelled from their livings on St.
Bartholomew's Day, 1662. They and their followers are the original
progenitors of the dissenting sects of modern England. The extrusion of
the Puritans was most thoroughly carried out, not only in the case of
beneficed clergy, but in the Universities and schools. No University
professor and no schoolmaster was to be allowed to teach, unless he got
a certificate of orthodoxy from his bishop.
[Sidenote: =The Corporation Act.=]
Not content with thrusting out the Puritan ministers from the livings
they had held, the Parliament went on to legislate against the Puritan
laity. The "Corporation Act" of 1661 enacted that all mayors, aldermen,
and other office-holders in the cities and boroughs of England should,
on assuming their functions, abjure the Covenant, take the oath of
supremacy and allegiance to the king, and receive the Holy Communion
according to the rites of the Anglican Church. Thus the Sacrament was
made into a political test, a scandalous perversion of the Holy Table.
This bill excluded all sectarians of the more conscientious and honest
sort from municipal authority, but it also produced the unsatisfactory
class of "occasional conformists," dissenters who took the oaths and
the Communion according to law, but remained outside the Church.
[Sidenote: =The Conventicle Act and the Five-Mile Act.=]
Before passing on to matters outside the sphere of things
ecclesiastical, we must mention two other persecuting bills passed, at
a somewhat later date, by the "Cavalier Parliament." The "Conventicle
Act" of 1664 forbade religious meetings of dissenters. Family worship
was to be allowed, but if any number of persons more than five were
present, beyond the members of the family, such a gathering was to
be held a "conventicle," and the hearers to be punished. Lastly, the
"Five-Mile Act" of 1665 forbade any minister who had refused to sign
the "Act of Uniformity" to dwell within five miles of any city or
corporate borough. It also prohibited such men from acting as tutors or
schoolmasters, unless they took an oath "to attempt no alteration of
the constitution in Church or State." These acts were purely vexatious
and spiteful, as the Nonconformists were now completely crushed and
harmless. Their numbers were already rapidly dwindling, and by the end
of the century they did not number a fifth of the population of the
realm. The vast majority of them had gone to swell the Low Church party
within the Anglican establishment.
[Sidenote: =Clarendon.=]
For the first seven years of the reign of Charles II., the days of
the "Cavalier Parliament," the chief minister of the realm was Edward
Hyde, Lord Clarendon. He was a survivor from the days of the Long
Parliament, being one of the original reforming members of that body
who had gone over to the royal side when the Puritan majority commenced
to attack the Church. He had been one of the wiser and more moderate
councillors of Charles I., and had followed Charles II. all through the
days of his exile. His daughter, Anne Hyde, had married James, Duke of
York, the king's brother. Fourteen years of exile had put him somewhat
out of touch of English politics, and his political ideals were more
like those of the Elizabethan monarchy than those of his own day. He
was an honest and capable, but not a very strong man. All through his
life he preserved the theories which had guided him in the early days
of the Long Parliament, wishing to keep a balance between the royal
Prerogative and the power of the two Houses. Of course he failed to
satisfy either king or Parliament, Charles thought that he was not
so zealous a servant as he might have been; while the advocates of
stringent checks on the monarchy thought him too subservient to his
master. Clarendon was a strong Churchman, and must bear his share of
the responsibility for the iniquitous "Conventicle" and "Five-Mile"
acts. In secular matters he was more judicious; he always opposed the
attempts of the king or Parliament to slur over the "Act of Oblivion
and Indemnity" and hunt down the adherents of the Commonwealth. In
foreign affairs he was a strong advocate of the old Elizabethan policy
of war with Spain and friendship with France, a system which was
rapidly becoming very dangerous, owing to the growing preponderance
of France under the vigorous and ambitious young king, Lewis XIV.
The first sign of his views was the sale of Dunkirk, Cromwell's old
conquest, to the French for 5,000,000 francs.
[Sidenote: =Profligacy of the court.=]
Clarendon's great fault was that he had no influence over his master,
the king. He allowed Charles to develop his unworthy personal habits
without remonstrance. The king filled both his palace and the public
service with disreputable favourites. He neglected his amiable but
unattractive wife, Catherine of Portugal,[44] and filled his court with
a perfect harem of mistresses, whose sons he made dukes and earls.
England had never seen shameless immorality in high places so rampant
in any previous age. The king's companions and servants were, as might
have been expected, men of scandalous life, and quite unfit for the
offices into which he thrust them. The tone of the court had a profound
and unhappy influence on the manners of the day. Never were the private
vices displayed so unblushingly; as if in protest against the formal
piety and bleak austerity of the days of the Puritans, England--or at
least its governing classes--plunged into extravagance and evil living
of all sorts. Drunkenness, profanity, thriftless luxury, gambling,
duelling, shameless lust, were accounted no discredit. The literature,
and more especially the drama, of the Restoration is coarse and foul
beyond belief. Even great poets like Dryden felt constrained to be
scurrilous when they wished to please. The days of the great civil war
had brought out the sterner virtues of Englishmen; the Restoration and
the reign of domestic peace were marked by the outburst of all the
folly and lewd frivolity which had so long been dormant beneath the
surface.
[Sidenote: =The Dutch war.--1665-67.=]
The chief political event of Clarendon's administration was the second
Dutch war, a struggle into which the minister was forced somewhat
against his will. It was an unwise war, for, in spite of the fact that
their commercial interests often clashed, England and Holland needed
each other's aid against the dangerous and restless power of France.
Narrow trade jealousy, however, sufficed to bring on a conflict which
ended with little credit to England. The fleet was very unsuccessful at
sea, not so much owing to its own fault, as to the unskilful hands of
its admirals. Charles gave the command to two old military men--General
Monk, the author of the Restoration, and Prince Rupert. These gallant
cavalry officers were wholly unable to handle a fleet; they led their
ships into battle, whatever the odds against them, and then left the
day to be decided by hard fighting. At a great three-days' engagement
in the Downs (January 1-2-3, 1666) Monk was totally defeated by the
Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, and his ill-success was very insufficiently
revenged by some predatory descents on the coast of Holland in the next
autumn.
[Sidenote: =The Plague--1665.=]
The days of the Dutch war were some of the most unhappy that England
has ever known. In the summer and autumn of 1665, the land was smitten
with the worst outbreak of pestilence that it has ever suffered. The
"Great Plague" raged in London with awful severity. The crowded and
ill-built city, utterly destitute of any sanitary appliances, and
foul with the accumulated filth of centuries, became a very hotbed
of contagion. Whole streets and parishes were swept clear of their
inhabitants by death or desertion; the clergy fled from their cures,
the physicians from their patients. All who could escape removed into
the country, and London in the late autumn looked like a city of the
dead, the grass growing high in its streets. The great plague-pits
by St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and Mile-end had been filled one after
another, as fast as they could be opened, with huddled bodies gathered
in the dreaded death-cart. At least a hundred thousand persons
perished; contemporary rumour named an even greater figure.
[Sidenote: =The Fire in London.--1666.=]
London had hardly recovered from the Plague, when in the next year it
suffered a fresh calamity, the Great Fire. A chance conflagration,
bursting out in the heart of the city, was carried west and north by
a strong wind, and swept away two-thirds of the inhabited houses of
the capital. All the great buildings of mediaeval London perished in
the flames, the old Gothic Cathedral of St. Paul's, eighty-eight other
churches, the Guildhall, the historic mansions of the nobility, the
halls of the rich City Companies, hospitals, old monastic remains,
all were swept away. Hence it comes that central London is poorer in
ancient architectural monuments than many a country town. The popular
dismay at such an unexampled catastrophe was so great that a rumour
went abroad that the conflagration was no accident, but had been
planned and spread by the Papists, who were believed capable of any
enormity since the wild attempt of Guy Fawkes. The Great Fire was
not without its benefits; it swept away for ever a thousand mediaeval
fever-dens, and allowed of the rebuilding of the city with wider
streets and more direct communications. Perhaps we may add that it
gave a unique opportunity to the great architect Christopher Wren, to
display his talents in the new St. Paul's and the many other churches
which he was commissioned to rebuild.
[Sidenote: =The Peace of Breda.=]
London was hardly beginning to rise again from its ashes, when the
Dutch war ended, in some disgrace, but no loss to England. The English
fleet had not recovered from the disaster in the Downs, for Charles
II. had squandered on his palace and harem the liberal grants which
Parliament made him to repair his navy. While the seas were unguarded,
a Dutch squadron slipped up the Thames, burnt the English dockyard
and ships at Chatham, and held the port of London blockaded for some
days. But negotiations were already on foot before this disaster was
suffered, and the Peace of Breda (1667) put an end to the war. The
terms were less unfavourable than might have been expected; England
modified the Navigation Act of Cromwell's day in favour of Holland, but
kept the valuable conquest of New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony in North
America, which lay between New England and Virginia. The settlement
changed its name, and was called in the future New York, after the
king's brother, James, Duke of York.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Clarendon.=]
Just after the Peace of Breda, Clarendon lost his place as the king's
chief minister. The disasters and mismanagement of the war were,
very unjustly, imputed to him rather than to his master. The Commons
impeached him for permitting corruption among the public servants,
and for wilfully misconducting the war. Bowing to the storm, he left
England and dwelt in exile till his death.
[Sidenote: =The Cabal.=]
No one was more glad than the king at Clarendon's departure. He filled
the place of his well-intentioned, if narrow-minded, minister with a
clique of his disreputable friends. This administration was called
the "Cabal" (from _Cabala_, the Hebrew word for strange and occult
knowledge), as being the depository of the king's secrets. The name
became popular because it chanced that the initials of the names of
the five men who formed it spelt the word "Cabal." They were Clifford,
Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Lord Clifford and the
Earl of Arlington were Romanists, a fact which brought much odium and
suspicion on their doings. George, Duke of Buckingham, the son of the
favourite of Charles I., a volatile, insincere man--
"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long,"
as Dryden wrote. He was the most profligate and unscrupulous man
in England. Lauderdale, an ambitious Scottish peer, was a renegade
Covenanter who had sold himself to the king for power. Anthony Ashley,
Lord Shaftesbury, was also an old Roundhead, whose love of office and
preferment had overcome his principles. He was an active, unscrupulous
man, whose ready talents were only prevented from achieving greatness
by his want of honesty and clear judgment.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Charles.=]
In replacing Clarendon by the "Cabal," Charles had two objects. So
far as he cared for anything beyond his own pleasures, he was set on
attaining two ends which he knew to be hateful to the nation: one was
to render himself independent of Parliamentary control; the other
to secure toleration, and if possible predominance, in England for
Romanism. He thought that his new ministers were sufficiently free from
scruples to aid him in his projects.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Lewis XIV.=]
His main helper in the scheme was to be his cousin Lewis XIV., the
zealous champion of Roman Catholicism on the continent, and the
most busy and ambitious monarch that France had ever known. Lewis
had already started on his long career of aggression against Spain,
Holland, and Austria. He was set on seizing for himself the frontier
of the Rhine, the dream of all French statesmen since his day. To
achieve this, he wished to conquer the Spanish Netherlands--the modern
Belgium--and the petty principalities of the middle and lower Rhine.
At the same time he was set on striking a blow against Protestantism,
whenever he had the chance, and most especially against the Protestant
power of Holland--for the "United Provinces" were both republican and
Calvinist, the two things that he hated most in the world.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Dover.=]
After diverting suspicions from his object for a moment, by concluding
a treaty of alliance with Holland and Sweden, which met with universal
approval, the king began to broach his scheme. It was worked out in the
iniquitous "Treaty of Dover" (May, 1670). By this Charles undertook
to join Lewis in destroying Holland and dividing up the Spanish
Netherlands. In return for this service he was to receive a subsidy
of £200,000 a year from France, and to have the aid of 6000 French
troops to crush any rebellion that might arise in England when he took
in hand the great project of restoring Catholic predominance in the
realm. This last clause was only known to the king, and to Arlington
and Clifford, the Romanist members of the Cabal. It was concealed from
Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury, who only knew of the plan for
the partition of Holland and the Spanish dominions.
[Sidenote: =Second Dutch war.=]
Having concluded this iniquitous agreement with his cousin, Charles
prorogued Parliament--he kept it from meeting for two years--and
declared war on the Dutch, without any ostensible cause or reason. At
the same time the French king launched a great army over his northern
frontier, overran the Spanish Netherlands, and penetrated far into
Holland. The Dutch were only saved from destruction by their desperate
resistance. Their fleet fought a drawn battle with the English at
Southwold, and staved off a naval invasion. Meanwhile the young William
of Orange, the heir of the old stadtholders, saved Amsterdam from the
French by breaking down the dykes and inundating South Holland. Driven
back by the floods, the French had to evacuate their Dutch conquests
(1672).
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]
Meanwhile Charles began to carry out his agreement with Lewis for
restoring Romanism, by issuing his "Declaration of Indulgence,"
suspending all the penal laws which imposed penalties on Roman
Catholics. To cloak his design, he made the proclamations cover
Protestant Nonconformists, as well as dissidents belonging to the older
creed.
[Sidenote: =Popular indignation.--The Test Act.=]
But the king had miscalculated the feeling of England. The "Declaration
of Indulgence" raised a storm about his ears which he dared not face.
So wrathful were the Churchmen, Low Church and High Church alike,
that he felt in serious danger of deposition. The Parliament met in
February, 1673, and passed an address requiring the king to withdraw
the "Declaration." Charles felt his nerve give way; instead of standing
his ground, and calling in his French auxiliaries, he yielded, and
withdrew his edict of toleration. The Parliament then passed the "Test
Act," which excluded all Nonconformists, Protestant and Romanist alike,
from all official positions. This made it impossible for Charles to
retain his Catholic ministers, Arlington and Clifford, and caused the
downfall of the Cabal, which went out of office in the end of 1673.
The Test Act also drove from his place as Lord High Admiral the king's
brother James, who had become an avowed Romanist.
[Sidenote: =Peace with Holland.--Danby chief minister.=]
The failure of the king's schemes was still further marked by the
conclusion of peace with Holland in February, 1674, and the appointment
as chief minister of Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, a good Churchman
and an enemy of France. Determined "not to go on his travels again,"
Charles gave way on all points, to the deep disgust of his cousin of
France, who despised him greatly for his craven desertion of the cause
of Romanism.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange.=]
But the king had not really given up his design. He was quite ready
to renew his alliance with France when the times should be more
favourable. Meanwhile he was compelled to profess an attachment to
Holland, and married his heiress, the Princess Mary, his brother
James's daughter, to the young Prince of Orange, the sworn foe of
France (1677). By such means he was able to keep himself safe, and to
laugh at the efforts of the Low Church party in Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury and the "country party."=]
This faction, the "country party," as it called itself, was now
headed by the unscrupulous adventurer Shaftesbury, who from being a
minister had become the king's deadly enemy, and was trying to stir up
trouble by warning the nation to beware of the Romanist and absolutist
tendencies of his old master--of whose reality none had a better
knowledge than himself.
[Sidenote: Fall of Danby.]
Danby was driven from office in 1678, owing to the discovery of
some of the king's secret negotiations with France, to which he had
been weak enough to give his assent for the moment, though his own
views were opposed to the alliance with Lewis XIV. The French king
knew this fact, and treacherously made the negotiations known, in
order that Danby might be discredited, and replaced by a minister
more suited to his tastes. His wily scheme was successful; Danby was
hounded from office, impeached, and condemned to imprisonment in the
Tower, though he produced the king's warrant for all he had done.
But the Parliament voted that the king could do no wrong, and that a
minister was responsible for all his acts, even when he acted under the
strongest pressure from his master. Thus the theory of "ministerial
responsibility" was fixedly and unequivocally proclaimed as part of the
Constitution.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury's schemes.=]
The fact that secret treaties with France were again in the air, gave
Shaftesbury and his friends, the ultra-Protestants, a fine opportunity
for a demonstration. Soon after Danby's fall, they raised a cry that
the kingdom was in danger from a plot to restore Romanism by the aid of
armed force from France. This was true enough, and the criminal was the
King of England. But Shaftesbury did not strike at the king; he feared
the loyalty of the Churchmen to the heir of Charles I., and thought
that his sovereign was so supple and weak that he might be terrorized
into becoming his instrument. The king was to be reduced to nullity,
not removed.
[Sidenote: =The Popish Plot.=]
When the cry against the Romanists was growing strong, there came
forward a certain depraved clergyman named Titus Oates, who had been
for a time perverted to Romanism, and had dwelt much with the Jesuits.
He made himself Shaftesbury's tool, by declaring that he had gained
knowledge of a great conspiracy against the peace of the realm. This
"Popish Plot" was, he said, an agreement by a number of English
Catholics to slay the king and introduce a French army into the realm
in order to place James of York, the king's Romanist brother, on the
throne. Now, it is probable enough that some of the accused were in
correspondence with France, and letters were discovered from Coleman,
secretary to the Duchess of York, written to friends abroad, which
spoke of an approaching blow to the Protestant cause. But the blow was
really to be dealt by Charles, not against him. It was he who was in
truth conspiring to bring over the French and conquer his own realm by
their aid.
[Sidenote: =Popular panic.=]
Oates, however, perjured himself up to the hilt, bringing forward
accusations against all the leading English Romanists, and hinting that
even Queen Catherine herself was privy to a plot to murder her husband.
Many minor informers also sprang up to corroborate the venomous tale of
Oates. The nation was seriously alarmed. A perfect outburst of frenzy
followed, and every Romanist in England was denounced as a disciple
of Guy Fawkes. Charles, to his shame, pretended to take the story
seriously, though none knew better than he its folly.
[Sidenote: =The Exclusion Bill.--The Habeas Corpus Act.=]
A new Parliament met in March, 1679; it was elected in the full flood
of indignation against the "Plot," and Shaftesbury found that he could
command a clear majority of its votes. He used his power to bring in
a bill excluding the Duke of York, as an avowed Romanist, from the
throne. To save his brother's rights, Charles dissolved the Commons
before they could pass it. The only work that this Parliament had
succeeded in carrying through was the _Habeas Corpus Act_, a very
important enactment prohibiting arbitrary imprisonment without a trial.
No man was to be kept in gaol untried, and penalties were imposed on
the gaoler who should detain him, and the judge who should refuse to
hear him plead. This principle required to be explicitly reasserted
under the later Stuarts, though it is found formulated in Magna Carta
itself.
[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the Duke of Monmouth.=]
The second Parliament of 1679 was, to the king's disgust, almost as
much under the influence of Shaftesbury and the alarmists as the
first. The nation was still in a ferment; month after month prominent
Catholics were imprisoned on the evidence of Oates and his gang, tried,
and condemned to death. So great was the fear felt of the Romanist Duke
of York, that a preposterous plan was formed by Shaftesbury and his
friends to replace him as heir to the throne by the Duke of Monmouth,
the eldest of the natural sons of King Charles. This was a manifest
injustice to the Princess Mary, the Protestant daughter of Duke James.
Her father's religion could not vitiate her rights. But Monmouth was a
popular youth, of fair parts and abilities. He had won some military
reputation by putting down a dangerous rebellion of the Scottish
Covenanters, who had murdered the Archbishop of St. Andrews, risen in
arms, and got possession of the Western Lowlands. After routing them at
Bothwell Brig (June, 1679), Monmouth was saluted as a conquering hero,
and rumours were put about that his mother, Lucy Walters, had been
secretly married to the king. Charles himself hastened to deny this
lie, but it had its effect, and a serious effort was made to substitute
Monmouth for his uncle.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury loses ground.=]
All through 1680 the struggle was at its height, though Shaftesbury
was gradually losing ground, owing to the unwise violence of his
conduct, and the growing disrepute of his tool, Titus Oates, whose
reckless falsehoods were beginning to be detected by sober men. The
contest turned on the fate of the Exclusion Bill, which declared James
incapable of reigning, and transferred his rights to his daughter Mary,
the Princess of Orange, though many suspected that Shaftesbury intended
to substitute Monmouth for the princess.
[Sidenote: ="Petitioners and Abhorrers."--Whigs and Tories.=]
It is at this moment that the famous political names which were to rule
England for the next century and a half come into sight. At first the
opponents of the Exclusion Bill, the supporters of the divine right
of hereditary succession, and the defenders of the Duke of York, were
called "Abhorrers," from the numerous addresses which they sent to the
king declaring their abhorrence of the Exclusion Bill. On the other
hand, the supporters of Shaftesbury, and the believers in the Popish
Plot, were called "Petitioners," from the petitions which they kept
signing in favour of the bill. But soon two less cumbrous, if stranger,
names were found for the two parties. The "Abhorrers" were nicknamed
"Tories" by their enemies, from the appellation of a horde of banditti,
who lurked in the bogs of Ireland. The Petitioners, on the other hand,
were christened "Whigs" by their rivals, after the name of a fanatical
sect of Scottish Covenanters. These titles, bestowed in ridicule
at first, were finally accepted in earnest, and became the usual
denomination of the two great parties.
The Exclusion Bill was passed by Shaftesbury and his majority of Whigs
in the Commons, once in 1679, and once in 1680. But the House of Lords
threw it out, and Charles dissolved the Parliament once and again,
till in 1681 the fear of the Popish Plot began to blow over, and the
violence of Shaftesbury to disgust the moderate members of his own
party. The cruel execution, in December, 1680, of Lord Stafford, an old
Romanist peer of blameless life, whose innocence was known to all, was
the last and most damaging triumph of the Whigs. Its injustice caused
many of Shaftesbury's supporters to fall away. His intrigues in favour
of Monmouth, and the open support which he gave to the lying Oates, had
ruined him.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Shaftesbury.--The Rye-House Plot.=]
In 1681 the king accused him of high treason for collecting armed
followers to overawe Parliament. A London jury refused to convict him,
and he plunged into still more desperate courses. Conspiring with Lord
William Russell and Algernon Sydney to raise rebellion, he was detected
and fled over-sea to escape punishment. Some of his more desperate
followers went on with his plot, which they developed into a plan for
assassinating Charles as he passed the Rye House in Hertfordshire, on
his way to Newmarket. The disclosure of this reckless conspiracy ruined
the Whigs; the whole party was believed to have been privy to it,
though it was in truth the work of a very small clique, headed by one
Colonel Rumbold, an old Cromwellian officer (1682).
[Sidenote: =Execution of Russell and Sydney.=]
The king, finding that public opinion was veering round to his side,
was emboldened to strike a blow at the whole Whig faction. Mixing up
the Rye-House Plot with Shaftesbury's abortive plans, he seized all
their chief leaders, and had them tried for high treason. Subservient
judges and a packed jury made their fall easy. Lord William Russell and
Algernon Sydney were beheaded; Lord Essex committed suicide in prison.
The evidence connecting Russell and Sydney with the assassination plot
was trivial, and their execution little else than a judicial murder
(1683).
[Sidenote: =Death of Charles.=]
Charles was now in a better position to carry out his long-concealed
plan for the restoration of arbitrary government and the furthering of
Romanism than at any previous time in his reign. He left Parliament
unsummoned for more than two years, prepared to renew his alliance with
France, endeavoured to collect a body of ministers who would second
his views, and largely increased his standing army. He made several
unconstitutional encroachments on the liberty of his subjects--such as
forfeiting the charters of many cities, including London itself--and
was cautiously feeling his way towards more decisive measures. But
on February 6, 1685, his plans were suddenly interrupted by a fatal
apoplectic stroke, which carried him off before he had attained the age
of fifty-five. On his death-bed he had himself openly received into the
Roman Catholic faith, of which he had so long been the secret partisan.
It was fortunate that his schemes were brought to such an untimely end,
for if a cautious foe to the liberties of England, he was a very clever
and insidious one. Of the stubborn folly which ruined his successor, he
would never have been guilty.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] General Harrison and nine other members of the court, Colonels
Axtell and Hacker, who had superintended the execution, and Sir Henry
Vane, though he was not an actual regicide.
[44] Only notable in British history because she brought the isle of
Bombay as her dowry.